


Mayflies in December

by kittydesade



Category: Alcatraz (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-11
Updated: 2012-03-11
Packaged: 2017-11-01 19:37:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/360472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agent Hauser gets a visit from the last old friend he ever expected to see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mayflies in December

Forms. Endless amounts of forms. Twenty, thirty years ago they had said the future would be a paperless society. Hauser's feeling was that the only way they would become a paperless society was if they used all the paper up. Insurance forms. Registration forms. Gun qualifications. He'd never had a problem with that part.

He shuffled all the papers into a stack and jammed them back into their file folder, muttering to himself as he did. "If they wanted this to be a clandestine organization, they shouldn't have such a wide paper trail."

"Perhaps they mean to bury the paperwork in a similar stack of files. A needle in a stack of needles, who would notice the difference?"

He didn't whirl around. Didn't drop his files; he stiffened and then slowly drew himself up, and turned around just as slow. 

She looked exactly the same as when they'd first met. Which was impossible, it should have been impossible, but given the nature of this DHS-FBI task force he already knew he would have to suspend his use of the word for a little while. She just provided the living proof of that. As though no time had passed between when he'd last seen her and this, she looked beautiful and serene and ready to go to work. 

"Lucy," he breathed. Tried to pull his thoughts together but they wouldn't go. He blinked and his focus strayed from the tips of her hair, cut a few days or maybe a week ago, to her long lashes, to the shape of her mouth, to her watchful dark eyes. He opened his mouth to say something else and swallowed instead because he couldn't think of anything to say. He knew he was older. Much older. 

"Emerson." She smiled. Still the most beautiful smile he had ever seen. " _Agent_ Hauser, I understand?"

"Ah, yes," he shook himself, dragged himself back to the present from the boat on the docks or the steps of the main ward. "These days." Another breath. Two breaths. He pulled a face, stomping on a couple of different urges that were out of place and inappropriate now. "When did they let you out of the wardrobe?"

She gave him a glare and a smile, like she didn't know whether to throw the collected works at his head or laugh at his bad joke. "I've only just arrived, actually," she ignored him, sweeping past and plucking the laboratory specs off of the top of the stack of his reading material. She didn't say from where, and he didn't ask. "You haven't changed."

That hurt. More than many things she could have said. "Yes, I have."

"You've gotten older," she admitted.

"You haven't."

His throat swelled up when she nodded and looked away. Dammit. He slammed the file down on the counter and turned back to stuff his reading material into his briefcase. "If they didn't tell you when the first briefing is, you should call..."

Her hand closed over his arm, her fingers tiny against the huge sleeve of his coat. He looked over at her and found himself unable to muster his usual cutting sarcasm deployed whenever someone touched him without warning or permission.

"Tomorrow morning, eight am," she nodded. "Which is more than enough time."

Hauser shook his head. He didn't understand. "More than enough time for what?" 

"To get that drink you promised me, when we last saw each other."

  


  


  


He took her out to the first place that came to mind, a bar he'd discovered his first week back in San Francisco that used to be the Watering Hole and now called itself the Eight Ball for some reason. Probably the same reason they added pool tables. The drinks were still good, and the place was actually cleaner now, a place he wouldn't be ashamed to take her to. Low hanging lamps with blue shades and a clean bar surface, hardwood floors and smooth black leather seats. They perched on the far corner of the bar, away from the door, by her choice since he let her lead the way in. 

And they sat down and ordered drinks and he couldn't think of anything to say. He leaned his forearms on the bar and dropped his head and he couldn't think of a single damn thing to say. 

Their drinks arrived. Neither of them reached for them; instead she reached over and covered one of his hands with hers. "It'll be all right."

He looked over at her with a smile he knew was tired and bitter. "You don't know what's happening any more than I do." 

"No," she agreed. "But I know that it must be something we can understand. There _is_ human agency behind this, and we will learn their identities, and figure this out."

His fingers curled and tensed with the effort not to presume, not to take her hand in his or pretend they had been so close all the intervening years. "You have quite a bit of faith in us." The agency. 

"No," she corrected him. "I have faith in you."

Her fingers laced through his. He looked down and squeezed her hand. The weight of all those years between them pressed on his chest, making every heart beat a near-painful labor. He didn't know what to talk about, if not the job at hand. Which only made it harder when those first few evenings out together he hadn't known quite what to talk about then. Youthful shyness. Now it was old age, weariness, and no life experience that prepared him for the woman he'd loved for all those years back again, seemingly brought back from his memories just as she was.

"I can't believe it's you," he said finally. 

She took a sip of her drink and wouldn't look at him for a moment. "This is all happening for a reason," she said, again. "We ..."

"We what? Have a second chance?" More bitterness; he took another sip of his drink to keep himself from saying something more cruel. He didn't let go of her hand, either. "It's been too long. Too much history..."

"Tell me?"

He looked back at her then, slumping back a little on his bar stool. There was so much to tell, years of it. Trying to solve the disappearances, her disappearance. The task force, the mystery of all those experiments, everything. The personal details of his life, or rather, the lack of them. He'd spent the better part of his life pursuing his work and it hadn't seemed to matter much until now, when he was rusty at relaxing and enjoying another person's company. 

The bartender glanced over at them and looked pointedly, once, at the menu. Hauser glared at him until he went away.

When he looked back at Lucy she looked like she might start laughing. She'd never been fazed by his moods, rarer though they'd been back then. She hadn't been fazed by anyone that he'd ever seen, no prisoner or guard, not even the Warden. "No, I was wrong. You have changed. Just a little." 

That was a tease. He was pretty sure that was a tease. "I got old," he reminded her, which was supposed to be a joke and only underscored what was stuck on his mind ever since she'd appeared. Old and tired and sagging. "Things happened. The world moved on." He'd read that in a book somewhere.

"Tell me," she said again. "Tell me everything. Every little detail, I want to know everything you've been up to."

She made it sound so easy, as though they'd been school mates at university and lost track of each other. She hadn't let go of his hand, either, though her fingers traced back and forth along the back of it as they sat and didn't touch their drinks. The touches felt electric, and he didn't know how long it had been since anyone had touched him like that. Or wanted to. Or he had wanted to let them.

Hauser closed his eyes and dropped his head, taking a breath. Then he started to tell her.

  


  


  


They ordered dinner and sat for another three hours, talking. He shared everything that had happened, one story leading into another as he remembered some idle fact or some detail that triggered the memory of something else, often unrelated. When they separated to eat their meals he felt the absence of her hand in the settling of the sweat on his palm, the moving air cooling his skin. She still ate with finishing school delicacy, he noticed. Whatever had happened to her hadn't changed her that much.

She told him a little of what she'd been up to, but not much. He had the impression that there wasn't much to tell, but he didn't want to ask, either. Not and have the strangeness interfere with them again. If he could keep it out. 

"Let me walk you home," she said, before he could offer to drop her off wherever she was staying. She made light of it, but he didn't press and he thought he saw a little relief in her eyes when she looked down, when he nodded. 

So they went back to his place, a mid-level apartment in a nice residential area, ubiquitous for a government agent. He didn't plan on spending much time here, it didn't matter where he lived. 

She even walked him up to his door, which made him smile a little as he turned around at the threshold. "You don't need to..." he started, and her fingertips pressed to his mouth. 

"Emerson," she told him, taking a breath that made him catch his own. "You are the one constant thing in my life. In the middle of all this. So, please, don't tell me..." 

His heart clenched again at the catch in her breath.

"Don't tell me what I need. Please. I know what I need." 

The hallway carpet was sickly green and scuffed. The paint on the door frame was beige and bland. An innocuous backdrop against his entire life being dashed to pieces and reformed again. Or something perhaps less dramatic, but then again how often did this happen? 

"You don't need to do any of this for my sake," he finished, and she nodded with a crooked and apologetic smile. Apology for the assumption. But for her sake, yes, anything. He searched her face for some kind of balance to the world. "What do you need?" 

She stretched up on her toes and he leaned down automatically, and it was still a shock when she kissed him. Just the once, lightly, but on the lips. And he didn't know what that meant.

Lucy smiled. "Just you."

Seconds ticked by while her meaning sank in. After a moment he tugged her inside, into the shelter of one arm around her shoulders as he pushed the door closed again, and then he could hold her properly. Her arms slid under his coat and around his waist and clung tight. Her hands curled and pressed against his back, bunching in his shirt. She didn't belong on Alcatraz, hadn't ever, she was too tiny and too frail. "I missed you," he rasped against her hair, and heard some choked noise against his shoulder in response. "I don't know how I managed without you."

The noise resolved itself into a sob. His hands slid over her hair and down to her cheeks, dry, but her eyes glittered. She could look up at him with that lost look any time, and in that instant he knew he would be reduced to that earnest young police officer who knew what it was to want to serve and protect the people of his beautiful city. 

And when she kissed him again, or he kissed her, that didn't matter. None of it mattered, not the mystery or the time gap nor age nor the lack of it, not the prisoners nor the island nor the rest of the world. The rest of the world could go straight to hell for all he cared. She was all his world now, and that meant it really might be all right.


End file.
